The Mass Rapid Transit system’s (MRT) Neihu and Muzha lines were completely suspended following a system failure last Friday. This incident has highlighted not only a problem with the MRT system, but more importantly, the fact that the government’s decisions on infrastructure investment are often unwise and have an adverse impact on the nation.
The source of the MRT malfunction is the problematic system integration of the Muzha Line and the newly opened Neihu Line — the first MRT system in the world that combines two different operating systems. The two lines were completed 13 years apart. Theoretically speaking, this case required a “smart settlement.”
A so-called smart settlement must be built on an effective understanding of the direction in which a situation is changing and of future requirements. It must be market-oriented rather than manufacturing-oriented. In a rapid, diverse and changing knowledge-based economy, such a concept is especially important.
The system integration of the Muzha and Neihu lines is an example of an unwise decision by the Taipei City Government. The experience in advanced countries shows that similar cases have been settled by replacing the old system with a new one. Taipei, however, did the exact opposite. That was because the city’s decision-makers are stuck in a manufacturing-oriented mindset. Moreover, to keep costs at a minimum and because of a limited budget, they chose to integrate new and old systems.
The government should have made the decision based on the direction of district development in Taipei and the growth of future market demand. The resident and mobile population of Neihu District is double that of Muzha. In addition, the Neihu Technology Park, the Nangang Software Park and the Nangang Exhibition Hall combined will attract more people than the Maokong Gondola and Taipei City Zoo. Thus the Neihu Line should have been a high-capacity system. Instead, Taipei chose to accommodate the medium-capacity system of the Muzha Line.
In the long run, the Muzha and Neihu lines will connect to the Banqiao/Nangang (blue) Line, the Xinyi/Tamsui (red) Line, the Songshan/Xindian (green) Line and the proposed Minsheng-Xizhi Line. When these lines are completed, the Neihu Line will have to deal with even higher passenger volume.
The malfunction of the Muzha and Neihu lines serves as a warning for what is to come. It mirrors the fact that many of the government’s infrastructure projects suffer from a frugality and willingness to cut corners that belong to a past era fraught with economic problems, as well as short-term populist thinking and booty-sharing. The unwise decisions these attitudes lead to are everywhere to be seen, and the catastrophic costs that will result from these decisions will haunt us forever.
Bert Lim is president of the World Economic Society.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS